The Grandmother Plot

by Caroline B. Cooney

  For Philip to die was not a shock. Everyone here was going to die relatively soon. Their poor sad bodies were decomposing in place. It was only a shock if somebody had caused it to happen, meant it to happen. If Philip hadn’t fallen or had a heart attack, had he been killed like Maude? This didn’t sound like suffocation, and anyway, Philip was strong enough to shove somebody away or strangle them back.

  For Maude’s death, the only suspect outside of staff was Kenneth, and Kenneth loathed Philip. He’d called the cops on Philip, called him names like “monster.” But how could it profit Kenneth to hurt Philip? Mapes had that over-the-top theory that Kenneth had shoved Philip onto Irene in order to blame Philip for Maude’s death. But if that were true, Kenneth wouldn’t kill off the guy he wanted to have carry the blame.

  Why go to all the trouble of getting Philip into the garden? If you tried to hustle Philip anywhere he didn’t want to go, he’d be swearing the whole way. Somebody would hear it. So Philip had gone willingly or gone out on his own.

  Freddy couldn’t imagine Auburn, Doc, or Skinny getting into the building at this hour and coaxing a great big guy to tiptoe out a garden door at night. Anyway, there were no unknown visitors at night, because a visitor had to be specially admitted after staff answered the front intercom. Come to think of it, Kenneth wouldn’t be here at night either; he didn’t have a person here anymore.

  Which meant it was one of the staff.

  Jade, who was suddenly working double shifts?

  Vera? Sherry? Grace? Mrs. Reilly? Constanza? Heidi? Monica? Aides and workers he hadn’t met?

  Freddy’s heart was racing. It was like an overdose without the drugs: paranoia, delusions, panic, extreme confusion. Freddy felt them all coming on.

  What was happening in this place?

  It would hit the news.

  Second homicide at Memory Care.

  He didn’t want to leave. He wanted to see Grandma.

  “Mr. Bell,” said the detective in a kindergarten-teacher voice. Now, little boy, do as you are told. “Get in your car and go home.”

  There was practically a platoon of cops standing here now. Freddy could feel the necessary self-discipline off to his side somewhere, but it was his third trip up here, they weren’t letting him in to see Grandma, and his sisters were going to go berserk when this hit the fan. He wasn’t leaving.

  He recognized the night cop from last night’s sleepover, still in the rumpled clothing that made him look like another Alzheimer’s patient. You were here? You were supposed to be protecting everybody, thought Freddy. What were you doing while this happening?

  The cop looked as jangled as Freddy felt. He was smoking, but it hadn’t helped his nerves. “You were negligent,” he said to the cop, wondering if he’d ever used that word before. “You weren’t paying any attention or this wouldn’t have happened.”

  Cops never dropped their eyes. Their stare was another weapon. The guy locked eyes on Freddy, and his whole body got belligerent, chest swelling, chin projecting. Hey, two could play that game.

  Wayne Ames butted in and said, “Listen, sport,” like he was dealing with vermin, “go home. We’re covering all the bases here.”

  “No, you’re not! Your cop was supposed to cover the bases.”

  They were all spoiling for a fight, especially Freddy, but he ran out of energy. Cops protected each other. They’d never admit screwing up. Freddy hated to admit defeat, but there was no way for him to reach Grandma, and if he actually socked one of these guys, visits to Grandma would be seriously crimped.

  He trudged back to the car, thinking of Marty, Philip’s son. He needed to call Marty and talk about Philip. Maybe tomorrow. Maybe ask about the funeral. Mapes would go with him.

  He was almost at the car and he sure hoped he had some cigarettes in there because he needed nicotine or he wouldn’t have enough zip even to start the engine. And then Freddy knew.

  “It’s you!” he yelled, turning around and racing back. He would have attacked the night cop if he could have, but the other cops instantly formed a row, elbows out, hands closing in on their weapons, or so it seemed in the shadowy confusion of night.

  “You went out for a smoke, didn’t you?” Freddy yelled at the overnight guy, who was hidden by his buddies or had fled. “You propped the door open! Philip didn’t get out. You let him while nobody was looking including you because you wanted your cigarette. You killed him!”

  The cops were a wall. Their chests, their equipment, their badges, their snarls.

  “Leave,” said Wayne Ames. “Just leave.”

  The garden gate opened. The one with the latch too high for most people to reach.

  A stretcher was wheeled out of the garden and toward the ambulance. The whirling lights of cop cars and fire truck illuminated the sheets over Philip’s body, changed their color, left them dark, and then covered them with shivery stars.

  Oh, Philip, thought Freddy. Whatever happened to you, you didn’t deserve it. Nobody here deserves it. And even though I’m sure it was an accident and it was the cop’s fault, I’ve been wrong about everything. Just the way my sisters and my mother always say I am.

  It could be staff, and it could be murder and I have to bring Grandma home tomorrow.

  WEDNESDAY

  Chapter Thirty

  Freddy had turned on all the lights in Grandma’s house and walked around for hours, trying to figure out how he was going to bring her home. He even had a pencil and paper, and he was not a list person. He was an oh-well-it’ll-probably-work-out person.

  She would want to sleep in her old bedroom, but the bed was high and she could no longer get up on it. If he took away the box spring, the mattress would fall through the slats. He could get rid of the frame and bedstead and put the box spring and mattress on the floor. But then it would be too low, and she could never get up. He probably had to rent a hospital bed.

  How would he block the stairs so she wouldn’t fall down them?

  What would he do about Snap?

  What about Grandma’s medications?

  And food. He’d have to ask what her diet was. How to fix it. Where to buy it.

  And the bathroom.

  What was he going to do about Grandma and the bathroom?

  He was so tense he couldn’t sit in a chair, never mind lie down in bed.

  Had a stupid, negligent cop left a door open so that Philip ended up in an unsafe place in the dark? Had Jade or Sherry or Grace or Monica walked Philip outside and shoved him? He realized that it was irrelevant to bringing Grandma home. No matter what had happened to Philip, murder had happened to Maude.

  Freddy mourned for Philip, who had never caught a break from anger and despair. Maybe it was a natural death, he told himself. Maybe Philip knew death was coming and he wanted fresh air and freedom for his last minute on earth.

  At five in the morning, his cell phone rang. It had to be one of his sisters, Googling MMC at this hour and finding out.

  But it was Jade.

  Freddy’s heart almost stopped. Grandma had been hurt after all. And he had left! He had driven away when she needed him.

  “Freddy, I’m telling you, but you can’t let anybody know I’m telling you. At the hospital? They did an X-ray of Philip’s body. He don’t have no broken bones. His throat, the little bone that breaks if they strangle you? It’s not broken. He don’t have bruises either. They think he just kind of folded up and died. His son was here, that really nice son? The heavy one? He thinks it was another heart attack.”

  Freddy’s rigid muscles and tendons gave way. He sat heavily on the nearest chair, an ugly maple captain’s chair with a thick tufted pad. It was a pretty great chair actually.

  “But the big news, Freddy?” Her voice was hot and gloating. “Guess what the real news is, Freddy?”

  Freddy couldn’t guess.

  “That night
cop who looked homeless?” she said gladly. “He admitted he went out for a cigarette and maybe left the door open.” So Jade was definitely part of the vast suspicious population that never wanted a cop around and cheered when a cop was in trouble.

  So the cops had followed through. Checked the garden, found the cigarette butts. Or maybe the guy himself stepped up and told them.

  Philip had not been murdered. It was probably still a homicide, manslaughter maybe, because that cop was responsible. But it didn’t have anything to do with Maude. And maybe, just maybe, he didn’t have to bring Grandma home immediately. He had time to hire an aide and get hold of a bed and deal with food and meds and a hundred other things he wouldn’t think of until it was too late. “Thanks for letting me know, Jade. Are you calling everybody?”

  “Just you.” Her voice was sneaky. “Doing you a favor, Freddy. So…Freddy? I’m into what you’re into. Maybe send me a certain type of flower?”

  She didn’t want roses, but he wasn’t going to be anybody’s supplier. Ever. Still, he did owe her because now he knew there wasn’t a serial killer on the staff. If the killer was on the staff, they were a one-time killer. “I hear you,” he said and hung up.

  He couldn’t get over that the cop had admitted doing wrong. His admission must be public, or Jade wouldn’t have known.

  Wait.

  A cop told me that the pendant on Constanza’s desk was a cocaine jar. Since when do cops tell the truth? Cops want information. They’ll say anything. Lying is their trade.

  Freddy was seized by a wild hope. There was no dirty drug money at those bead shows because the drug in question was not coke. It was marijuana, which was legal, or sort of, or going to be, so whatever.

  Sagging in the embrace of the captain’s chair, he looked across the room and saw the stairs, which he didn’t have to gate or fence after all, or at least not today, and remembered that he made glass down there, that he had glass in the kiln!

  He hopped out of the chair and ran down the steps.

  He had completed the snare drum for his future drum set rig, and now he took it from the kiln. Its body was gold with a scarlet hoop, the drumhead amber streaked in green, with a fat knob to string a gold chain. The face on the drum was sick.

  Totally stoked, he put it on line for auction.

  #drumsmadeofglass#borosilicateclass

  #dogsthatsnap#snapsthatdog

  The Snap hashtags had nothing to do with the pendant and didn’t rhyme, but he loved them and he’d already sent them, so whatever.

  Wait.

  The drum was supposed to be a removable part of a drummer rig he hadn’t yet made, and he shouldn’t be selling it separately. Once again, Freddy recognized that he had the brains of gravel.

  He wrapped up in the comforter he’d thrown on the floor for Snap, went outside to sit on Grandma’s redwood lounge chair, and fell asleep.

  His ringing cell phone woke him up.

  He was bleary and cold, Snap was barking, he was starving.

  It was the Bach Toccata so it was Mrs. Maple. She must have heard about Philip. She’d have another conspiracy theory to run by him. Freddy tried to pull himself together. Then he thought, Face it. Pulled together is not my thing.

  Mrs. Maple didn’t even bother to say hello. “I need to tell you something, Freddy. I need you to know something in my past. Very few people in my life are aware of this.” Her voice was trembling, an intro voice; something’s coming. But this was apparently not about Philip. It dawned on him that if Philip had died from a regular old heart attack (which, were they going to take Marty’s word for it or do an autopsy?)—anyway, they didn’t have to notify everybody’s family. They wouldn’t have notified Mapes.

  Except MMC probably did have to admit negligence, even when it wasn’t theirs.

  There would be inspectors or social workers or whatever. The entrance and exit doors would be set up differently. New protocols. A totally annoying word that really meant, We’re adding more rules and you have to follow them.

  Freddy had enough to think about without Mrs. Maple’s past. “Whatever it is, I don’t want to know,” said Freddy. “Please don’t confess anything. I love ignorance.”

  Like all the women in Freddy’s life, she didn’t even pretend to listen. “I’m at the cemetery, Freddy. At the grave of my husband.”

  Hadn’t he been firm? Don’t tell me anything. He thought about Jade. He wasn’t going to give her weed so maybe he’d give her glass when he went up today. What did he have around?

  “My husband was a cocaine addict, Freddy. I loved him so but it turned out that he loved coke. I am very fond of you and so impressed by the beautiful beads you gave me, but the pipes… Oh, Freddy, I wish you weren’t making pipes. I cannot accept that the way to a righteous life is smoking pot.”

  In his circle, “righteous” meant cool. Sweet. Epic. Mrs. Maple meant obeying the Lord’s commandments. I’ve got one of ’em down anyway, he thought. I’m honoring my mother, and I’m honoring her mother.

  “And you get lung cancer,” said Mrs. Maple.

  “Not from herb,” Freddy corrected her. “But people who smoke pot usually smoke cigarettes, so you’re right. Lung cancer’s out there.” He didn’t tell her whether he was making beads or pipes, the particulate from glass could lodge in the lungs and that would never heal, that glare and particulate often caused severe eye problems, that color dust could be poisonous.

  Freddy did not believe marijuana was a gateway drug: that people who loved weed would one day decide they’d love cocaine even more. Freddy could skip weed for a week, but he couldn’t skip cigarettes for an afternoon, and if he had an addiction that would kill him one day, it was tobacco.

  “My husband was out for his daily run, and he collapsed on the sidewalk. We found out about the cocaine from the autopsy. The doctors said that arrhythmia and tachycardia are common with cocaine. He was an athlete in good condition. I’m sure he never expected death. The children were in college when it happened. They couldn’t believe I hadn’t picked up on the symptoms. Like the runny nose. He said it was an allergy. That sounded logical to me. And the mood swings. Who doesn’t have those?”

  Freddy didn’t. He was a happy kind of guy. Until now anyway. October had shattered like glass, and the whole month belonged in the Box of Pain.

  “After the funeral,” said Mrs. Maple, “the children searched the house. They said their father had to have a stash somewhere. But they never found it. The family counselor said that he probably used whatever he bought as soon as he bought it and there never had been a stash.”

  People didn’t stockpile. That was how guys on the street made their money and how cops caught the buyers. All that activity. He thought about Auburn, casting around for high-end clientele: people like Mrs. Maple’s husband, who had money.

  “My children hold me responsible,” said Mrs. Maple dully.

  Freddy had known this woman for months, and many of their conversations had been profound. On the graph of life, he would have given her a boring suburban straight line, but she was talking serious peaks and valleys here.

  “You know, Freddy, if I visit MMC routinely, I’m okay. It’s just something I do. But if I let a week go by, I stand at that door full of fear. As if, when I go through that door, I’ll be the patient. They’ll take my things and lock me up and I will never get out. No one will hug me or sit with me except people who are paid to do it. That’s the punishment waiting for me.”

  “Come on,” said Freddy. “There’s no punishment waiting for you, Mrs. Maple. You’re a saint.”

  She hung up on him.

  Chapter Thirty-One

  Laura couldn’t believe she had made that phone call to Freddy, let alone chastised him. Why take out her despair on a boy who had his own problems?

  She had barely gotten home from the cemetery when another difficulty surfaced. Betty
Sherwood’s niece Tiffany texted, asking her to visit again soon and please bring back the album.

  Kenneth/Bobby was presumably at that Farmington house where Betty had placed the call. Laura couldn’t phone Kenneth and request that he bring the album back. She sent Freddy a text, asking him to go get the album, since he was always in Middletown anyway, and Farmington was sort of close. It was a major demand, especially right after haranguing him and hanging up on him, but Freddy was used to women asking a lot, and she thought he’d do it for her.

  The front doorbell rang. She dragged herself through the dark house.

  “It’s me, Kemmy!” yelled Kemmy.

  Laura opened the door.

  “Put the lights on,” said Kemmy irritably. “Open the curtains. You’re turning into a mole. It happens to people who live alone.” Kemmy walked around hitting light switches. “Where’ve you been? I stopped by earlier.”

  Earlier? It was barely midmorning. Of course, anybody who knew Laura knew she was up before dawn, so Kemmy had probably figured early was good.

  “I was at Memory Care,” said Laura, which was a lie, but she couldn’t talk about the cemetery. She couldn’t tell anybody that sometimes her grief for her husband was so deep she had to drive there and stand over his grave and cry aloud, How could you? We loved you!

  She yearned to weep. Sometimes tears helped, like a faucet letting out pain, but more often tears gave her a throbbing headache. She grit her teeth and postponed sobbing until after Kemmy’s departure.

  “You’ve already been up to Memory Care and back? Do you have breakfast with your aunt? That’s so sweet, Laura,” said Kemmy, giving Laura a not-touching hug. “I love how devoted you are. You set such a good example for us all. You’re a saint. So yesterday, I gave the manuscript to Gordon Clary.” Kemmy plopped down on the parlor sofa, as if she planned to stay for hours. “He was so excited.”